Users have access to computing devices that may assume a wide variety of configurations. For example, the first computing devices that were traditionally available to common users were configured as desktop personal computers. Users typically interacted with these computing devices using a keyboard and later a mouse to view data on a monitor.
Computing devices continued to evolve as users desired to interact with the devices in an increasing variety of circumstances. One such example was mobile phones that evolved from basic telephone functionality to the ability to run applications. Another such example is a slate computer, which may also be referred to as a tablet. Both of these examples are configured to be held by a user during interaction.
Because users hold these computing devices, a user may be able to easily change a device's orientation during interaction. Moreover, some orientations of a computing device may be more suitable for viewing particular content than other orientations. For example, it may be desirable to view some content with a computing device held vertically (e.g., a document) and desirable to view other content with the computing device held horizontally, e.g., a movie. Consequently, many computing devices have been configured to change a screen orientation to follow an orientation of the computing device. Sometimes, however, changing the screen orientation to match a computing device's orientation may be undesirable or annoying, such as when a user accidentally rotates the device or hands the device to another user, during quick movements of the user, and so on.